尤三姐

Her Story

The younger You sister, the opposite of the elder in every way. In Chapter 65 Jia Zhen and Jia Lian, both assuming the You girls are available to them, come to the outside house to drink. You Sanjie takes over the evening. She sits them down, pours for them, calls for her sister so the four of them can be merry, and talks — 自己高谈阔论，任意挥霍洒落一阵 — until the two libertines cannot get a word out. The narrator is explicit: she turns their own manner back on them, and they leave frightened. Jia Zhen never comes again unless she sends for him.

She will marry one man or none. Asked who, she tells her sister to think back five years, to a birthday at their grandmother’s where amateur players performed: the young male lead was Liu Xianglian, and she has waited since. Jia Lian meets him on the road in Chapter 66, puts the match to him, and he sends his betrothal token — the 鸳鸯剑, his family’s heirloom, a pair of matched blades in one sheath. She takes it to her room and hangs it up.

Then Liu Xianglian meets Baoyu, learns his bride lives in the Ning mansion, and says the thing that ends her: 你们东府里除了那两个石头狮子干净，只怕连猫儿狗儿 都不干净 — nothing in that house is clean except the two stone lions at the gate. He comes to take the sword back. She hears it from the next room, unhooks the sheath, hides the female blade inside her elbow, and walks out. 一面泪如雨下，左手 将剑并鞘送与湘莲，右手回肘只往项上一横 — she hands him the sheath with her left hand and draws the blade across her own throat with her right. Liu Xianglian weeps over the body and buries her; after she appears to him once more to say goodbye, he draws the male blade of the pair, cuts off his hair with it, and follows a Taoist away.

In Xiang Li's Hands

The only figure here painted mid-action, and Xiang Li picks the instant before the stroke. The head is thrown right back, the black hair torn upward in a single plume, the left fist flung high; the right hand grips the hilt and the blade lies flat across her own throat. She is in an ochre robe printed with pale roses under a vermilion scarf that arcs away to the left across the whole sheet. Everything behind her is bare paper. Note the weapon: the novel’s 鸳鸯剑 is a short paired blade, and what she paints is one long straight sword.

The Calligraphy

尤三姐 sits low on the right, three characters, and like her sister’s it is a position rather than a name — the You family’s third girl. The novel gives her no given name either, so the two sheets hang as a matched pair with only the numeral between them. Here the inscription is placed opposite the raised fist, in the one quarter of the paper the figure has left empty.

Connections

• Liu Xianglian 柳湘莲 — the man she waited five years for, whose doubt she answered with his own sword.
• You Erjie 尤二姐 — her elder sister, who died by swallowing gold a few chapters later.
• Jia Zhen 贾珍 — master of the Ning mansion, who expected to have her and was routed in Chapter 65.
• Jia Lian 贾琏 — her brother-in-law by the secret marriage, and the go-between who carried the betrothal sword.
• Jia Baoyu 贾宝玉 — whose careless answer to Liu Xianglian about the Ning household set the refusal in motion.

Others of the same kind · Jia household – wives, concubines, in-laws Wang Xifeng 王熙凤 · Li Wan 李纨 · Qin Keqing 秦可卿 · Wang Furen 王夫人 · You Erjie 尤二姐 · Xue Baoqin 薛宝琴 · Xing Xiuyan 邢岫烟 · Li Wen 李纹 · Li Qi 李绮 · Xing Furen 邢夫人 · You Shi 尤氏 · Xue Yima 薛姨妈 · Zhao Yiniang 赵姨娘 · Zhou Yiniang 周姨娘 and 11 more

Named on these pages You Erjie 尤二姐 · Liu Xianglian 柳湘莲 · You Laoniang 尤老娘

Dream of the Red Chamber
Xiang Li painted all 413 characters of the novel between 1975 and 1985, the first person to complete the entire cast. See the whole collection · Chinese Empresses